The 2020 Lockdown League

NPR recently aired a segment that explored the topic - what people are doing to find a purpose during these trying times.

It’s been over two months for most of the world which is, under stay at home or lockdown orders. Covid-19 realities and fears, like never before have altered people’s behavior and global economy. While millions lost their jobs, many were able to transition to work from home and are now learning to deal with “work life coexistence.” Although nations and states now seem to be grappling with orderly reopening of the economies, most people are not sure how to deal with this new paradigm that we live in.

The satisfying sense one has about “purpose for life” is not just about working from home, when most in person social interactions are prohibited or restricted due to safety concerns. Off course social media and technology played its part to keep people connected, but lacked to bring excitement beyond sharing information, fake news and recycled jokes. The excitement of doing an activity or just “hanging out” with friends after work or on weekends is largely missing for most of us.

While growing up in Powai, in a small community of 30 families, we friends then in our late teens or early 20s, used to play games like treasure hunt, guess the movie, etc.., during holidays and festivals. These games were hugely popular and brought our group of friends closer together and we used to look forward to these events. These games were created by one of us in turns, were fun to play and provided a bit of competitive engagement.

Now fast forward, 30 to 40 years. Many of my friends now around retirement are scattered around the world and our children are in their 20s. We have kept in touch over the years thanks to social media and we often chatted about the magic of those social evenings back home.

While reminiscing one day during the early stages of stay at home, my mind wandered and I created a set of treasure hunt clues. Then I said to myself, let me post these on our WhatsApp group just for fun. To my surprise there was an enthusiastic response from my friends. Although the game didn’t have the excitement of dashing around or screaming, the group got engrossed in trying to “crack it” (solve it). And many suggested we send the game to the younger generations who had also experienced the excitement of these games over the years in our society. The early games were welcomed with enthusiasm across three generations - The Pioneers (of the games), Gen X and the millennials.

So we decided why don’t we try and make this into a competitive gaming platform. Using WhatsApp we created three groups, and decided to play games 5 times a week at 9:30 PM IST or noon EST and evening in Europe. This allowed gamers on three continents to play. Soon the teams gained momentum with a total of over 60 gamers engaged each night, competing and bonding. All our friends and the youngsters, ages spanning from 20 to 70 years, were looking forward to each day to connect with each other and compete across generations.

The games were unique and were created by the participants taking turns. And the game topics ranged from local Powai and Mumbai to global history, mythology, food, sports and ever popular Bollywood. The games were typically themed around what we shared in past and/or about popular topics. Designing each game to be relevant to the group added to the leagues attraction. Recycled quizzes circulating on WhatsApp University were strictly avoided. Each game with typically 20-40 clues ran for about an hour. It was scored at the end to rank the team performance and a virtual gold medal was awarded to the winner each night. That got each team actively engaged and competitive. The team members used to come together to strategize before the game and stay long after doing post game analysis. It was almost as much fun as our evenings in Powai, many years back.

Over 6 to 8 week’s period we played 28 games in total, in what we started calling as “The 2020 Lockdown League”. While most popular sporting leagues around the world are forced to shut down, our league in a small way helped us to keep ourselves entertained. During this period we came together virtually across generations and continents with a purpose to compete, socialize and enjoy.

It was only befitting that we planned a grand closing ceremony at the end of this league. Again we rallied our tech savvy youngsters and with the use of video conferencing conducted a virtual closing ceremony with awards and speeches, making the event almost as enjoyable as the real in person ceremony.

Maybe this is what the future hold for us. And we are glad that we were the pioneers. “To go where no man/woman has gone before”.

Uday Virkud writes from Wayland MA

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